


Ice Dreams

by rikyl



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, fluff as in fluffy snow, non-canon timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-18 04:24:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10609224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikyl/pseuds/rikyl
Summary: It snows in Pawnee, and Ben teaches the Parks Department a little something he picked up in Minnesota.Originally posted to LJ.





	

When the first real snowfall arrived in the second week of December, dropping five slushy inches on Pawnee, Ben had been dating Leslie for four weeks.

He got to the office promptly at 8 a.m. in a good mood and eager to share this with her. It was just snow, but he had a feeling that Leslie was the kind of person who would appreciate the romance of a first snowfall. He was picturing an evening with warm blankets and candles and hot cocoa and …

Good lord, I’ve gone off the deep end, Ben thought sheepishly. There was just something about Leslie that made him crave every romantic cliché he’d ever scoffed at before.

Arriving at the parks department offices, he was surprised to see the lights off. That was weird, because she was almost always in before he was. Huh.

Figuring he’d check back in a bit, he headed over to his own office and got to work. With the quiet and total lack of interruptions, he was quickly absorbed by what he was doing, and before he knew it, hours had passed.

When he finally heard the building stirring, he looked up and was surprised to see the clock said 12:15. Jumping up, he went looking for Leslie, wondering why she hadn’t popped in to say hi yet.

Sure enough, the lights were on in the parks department, but Leslie and everyone else seemed to be just filing in and getting settled.

Leslie spotted him, her face lighting up in a way that made his heart beat faster and his face flush slightly—this was still that new. “Ben!” she exclaimed. “There you are. Did you get in okay?”

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her. “Um, yeah, I’ve been here since 8. Apparently by myself. Nice of you all to show up finally."

Leslie, Tom and Donna all looked at him like he was insane, and Ben was seriously confused. What—had he missed something? Was the 12th of December some sort of weird half-day holiday that only Pawnee celebrated?

Leslie came over and put her hand on his arm, all concerned seeming, and as much as he still didn’t get what the deal was, he was enjoying her caring. “Oh, honey! Didn’t you hear? It was a snow emergency! The warning wasn’t over until noon.”

Oh, right, the snow. As long as Ben had lived in Indiana, he still could not wrap his head around the way these people freaked out and came to a standstill over a little white stuff. “Um, yeah, I noticed that. So?”

“Well, dummy, that means you’re not supposed to drive unless it’s an emergency!” Tom scolded. “Were you delivering a baby? Were you putting out a fire?”

“No,” Ben answered quietly.

“Then you’re supposed to stay home and sleep in like a normal person,” Tom finished, rolling his eyes.

“Um, where I come from, ‘snow emergency’ means don’t park on the street for 24 hours,” Ben defended himself. Seriously, someday he was going to tell these people about the Halloween blizzard of 1991 and blow their minds.

Tom and Donna just kind of shook their heads at him dismissively, and even Jerry gave him a sympathetic look that made him realize he shouldn’t bother arguing anymore—not if it was going to put him a rung below Jerry on the office ladder.

Instead, he followed Leslie into her office, and she smiled at him all warm and amused, putting him at ease again. “Where you come from, huh?” she teased him gently. “Do you miss Minnesota?”

“I do. Sometimes. Some things.” Actually he hadn’t thought about it for a while, had avoided thinking about it for most of his adult life, but there was something about being around Leslie that made him feel okay about things he’d spent so much time running away from.

“What things?” she prodded.

“Well, I guess I don’t miss the below-zero temperatures, or the constant snow shoveling.”

“Sounds just awful,” Leslie said, wrinkling her nose at the thought.

Of course, she was such an outdoors person, the idea of so much inclement weather probably wouldn’t sound appealing. But then he pictured the frozen lakes, the colonies of ice-fishing houses springing up, the kids strapping on their ice skates, and smiled wistfully.

“Nah, I think you might like it,” he said. “Picture the parks department having its own Zamboni.”

“That’s a thought! What would we do with a Zamboni?”

The mental image of Leslie driving a Zamboni made him grin. “Groom the ice, what else? Hockey rinks. Pleasure rinks. In all the parks. I think you’d like it, really.”

She laughed affectionately. “You and ice. What is that about?”

He shrugged contentedly, because the mention of anything having to do with ice used to be enough to make him flinch, but not when it was Leslie mentioning it. As weird as it was, she seemed to appreciate that part of him, the reckless kid who had tried something big even if it had blown up in his face.

“It’s fun. That’s all.”

“Were you a hockey player?” She was smiling flirtatiously now, looking like she might be into that, and he suddenly wished he had been.

“Me? No. I knew how to skate, but hockey was never really my thing.”

Leslie came out from behind her desk and circled her arms around his waist, and he thought: one, they shouldn’t be doing this here, and two, so much for work—he was in no hurry to get back to his corner of the building.

“That’s because you’re too much of a beanpole, isn’t it,” Leslie said, smiling up at him.

“Yeah, that’s the reason,” he agreed softly, racking his brain for something that might impress her. He’d played baseball of course, but that wasn’t a winter sport, so it might sound like he was trying too hard if he mentioned it now. Then he thought of something. “I played a little broomball. Nothing organized. Just with friends.”

She laughed, and it was the warmest, best sound in the world. “Ben Wyatt. Did you just make up a sport to try to impress me?’

“What, no! It’s a sport. Broomball. You’ve never heard of broomball?”

She let her arms fall away from him, apparently needing her whole body to laugh at this. “No, I’ve never heard of it. Broomball? What on earth is that!”

“A sport,” he said, missing her arms and feeling just the slightest bit wounded by her laughter, as good-natured as it seemed. “I can’t believe the deputy director of a parks department hasn’t heard of broomball. It’s a sport, I swear.”

“Prove it. How do you play?”

“Well, it has similar rules to hockey. But instead of skates, you wear sticky shoes—”

She convulsed in laughter again, and the rest of the parks department started to crowd in to see what the commotion was over.

“Sticky shoes! You’ve got to be making this up,” Leslie said.

“No, I mean—they’re not actually sticky. But they have some traction so that they stick to the ice. So you don’t fall down when you’re running.”

He glanced nervously around at the parks staff, who were all staring at him like he was a visitor from another planet. They were all sort of his friends now, but he still felt like a bit of an outsider, and it made him uncomfortable when they all seemed to gang up on him.

Better just to get out of here quickly now. “The rest is in the name. Brooms. Balls. That’s it. That’s broomball.”

Leslie opened her mouth, a gleeful look on her face, and damn it. She was not going to let him off the hook that easily.

“Oh, no. That is not it.” She clapped her hands together. “We’re doing this!”

Oh, hell. “We’re doing what?”

“Everybody, Ben is going to teach us a new game!” Leslie announced happily.

No way, not happening. “Um, I think you’re forgetting something. We need ice,” he pointed out frantically.

“Ben! What are you talking about? It’s 32 degrees outside. We’ll find some ice. Come on!”

“What about the lot behind the rec center?” Jerry chimed in helpfully, and nothing against Jerry—good guy and all—but at moments like this Ben couldn’t help seriously hating Jerry. “It’s low, so all that rain we got last week flooded it. It’s probably frozen now. It’s 32 degrees today.”

“Somebody tell me again, what temperature does water freeze at, because I keep forgetting,” Ben muttered sardonically.

But Leslie ignored him, pointing decisively at Jerry. “That’s perfect! Jerry, you rock. All right, people. We’re going to work until 5. Then everybody go home and get a broom and meet us behind the rec center. Ben, what kind of ball do we need?”

“Um, you don’t use actual brooms.” This was so ridiculous. How had he gotten himself into this?

She looked confused. “What do you use then?”

And he hesitated, wavering, because in spite of feeling put on the spot in front of everyone, he really enjoyed seeing Leslie get so excited about something. He loved that about her.

Wait, loved? That couldn’t be right; they had only been together for four weeks. On the other hand, if he was Andy Dwyer, he’d be proposing marriage right now. Good lord.

Something inside him buckled, and he gave himself over to the craziness. “Okay, fine, you can use real brooms.”

“What kind of ball?” Leslie asked again.

It wasn’t like he was going to find an actual broomball in southern Indiana. “Just find me a soccer ball. That’ll work.”

She leaned up, smiling, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “Thanks, Ben, you’re the best.”

As he headed back to his office, he shook his head, happy and just—wow. He was never going to get used to this.

 

******

 

Ben half-expected nobody would show, and that he and Leslie would just end up sticking to his original plan for the evening. That wouldn’t have been so bad.

But he was always underestimating the ability of Leslie Knope to get people to do what she wanted. By 5:20, quite a crowd had assembled: Tom, Donna, Jerry, Ron, Andy, April, Ann, a really loud guy from parks security, and Brett and Harris from animal control. With him and Leslie, it was enough for two complete teams, even if they did look a bit ludicrous. Clutching their household brooms, they could have been a mob of villagers ready to storm a fortress or something.

They also had a couple hockey nets, which Leslie had explained by saying, “It’s a snow day. The high school won’t miss them until tomorrow.” Sounded shady, but okay, whatever.

No one had special footwear, of course, but it didn’t matter much. They were playing in a sea of slush. Ben had the urge to point out that ice melts at pretty much the same temperature that water freezes, but he kept that bit of snark to himself.

Everyone gathered around and looked at him expectantly. “Right, well, you all know how to play hockey, right? Or soccer? It’s the same basic deal. Just use your, er, broom and try to hit the ball into the other team’s net. And there’s no referee, so just ... everybody be cool, right?”

“What are the teams?” Jerry asked.

Ron pointed at Ben and Leslie. “Let’s get this moving. Ben, Leslie, you’re the captains, pick your teams.”

“Um …” Ben started to say. He didn’t usually like to draw attention to the fact that he and Leslie were a couple, but this wasn’t exactly a work situation, and if they were going make him do this, he should at least be able to play with her. “I don’t get to be on a team with Leslie?”

Tom snorted. “Yeah, as if that would be fair.”

“What’s not fair?” Ben knew Leslie was amazing in a million ways, but he didn’t exactly expect her to be the ringer of the bunch.

Ron set him straight. “Ben, you’re the only one who knows how to play this game. And Leslie’s the only former hockey player. So … just pick your teams.”

Leslie grinned at him proudly. “Yeah, that’s right, Wyatt. We have hockey here in Indiana too. It’s called field hockey. And I was the captain of my team in high school.”

Damn, that was kind of hot.

So they picked their teams, and Ben ended up with Donna, Andy, April, Brett and Harris. Leslie got Ron, Ann, Tom, Jerry, and the loud guy.

As “captains,” Ben and Leslie ended up in the faceoff circle, but they didn’t have anyone to drop the ball to get it started, so he just set it down and let her take the first swat at it with her broom.

Then they were off, and he quickly realized he shouldn’t be “letting her” do anything, because she could obviously handle herself. It wasn’t long before she got the first goal past Andy, who was playing goalie for Ben’s team.

“Whoomp, there it is!” she called out to him, and it should have been so obnoxious, but it wasn’t, because it was Leslie.

“All right, all right,” Ben said, rolling his eyes but laughing.

And they made a game of it. As klutzy as he could be, Andy also had no fear of aggressively throwing himself in front of the ball. He pulled off some impressively acrobatic saves or almost-saves in goal.

Ron, playing goalie for Leslie’s team, had a completely different style: He was basically making himself into a hulking human wall, just shifting back and forth as needed, and it was more effective than you might think.

April, who Ben had picked last and mainly because Andy had insisted, surprised him with how vicious and scrappy she could be. And she was little and quick, so she managed to sidestep people pretty easily.

Donna was slower but still tough. Ben had always been ever-so-slightly intimidated by Donna, so he was relieved to have her on his side.

The animal control guys were surprisingly average, considering that they were such a couple of bumbling doofuses in general.

Leslie’s team was more mixed. Ron was great in goal, but she got stuck with Jerry, whose mistakes were directly responsible for no fewer than three goals for Ben’s team.

Ann could have been decent, because she was coordinated, but she was too hesitant, too afraid to get slushy or something.

Tom had precious little athletic ability but made up for it with sheer competitiveness; he played like a little guy with something to prove.

The loud guy was just loud.

But Leslie was … Leslie was fantastic: quick, smart, competitive and tough. When her team was up by two and they’d been playing for an hour, Ben decided to call it. Everybody was having a great time, but the freezing slush had seeped through his jeans, and he couldn’t quite feel his knees.

“What, that’s all the game you brang, Wyatt?” Leslie taunted him. “Cause I could keep this up all night.”

And again, it should have been obnoxious, but … she looked so pink-cheeked and happy, so in her element, so full of light on this dreary day, and all he could think of was how much he wanted her to himself.

Feeling out of breath and exhilarated from the game, he walked right up to her so that the whole department didn’t hear and said near her ear, “Stop the trash talk, Leslie, or I’m going to withhold the whipped cream from your cocoa tonight.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” she said, smiling sweetly now. "This was fun, Ben. Thanks for teaching us. And you guys were totally in it until the end. Good game.”

“Yeah, you too,” he said, leaning down to kiss her, just a short one, while no one was paying attention. “Come on, let’s go get warm.”

 

*****

 

Half an hour later they were comfy on Leslie’s couch, under a big blanket with two big mugs of cocoa. No fire or candles, but it didn’t seem to matter just then, with his arm around her shoulders and her warm little body snuggled up against him.

She smiled up at him contentedly. “All right, I’ll admit, that was fun. Maybe Minnesota’s not so bad after all.”

“It’s not. I’ll take you there someday,” he said, surprising himself. He’d been back to Minnesota occasionally since relocating—scattered holidays, his brother’s wedding. But it had had never occurred to him to take a girlfriend up there. With Leslie, it didn’t sound like such a terrible idea.

“Oh, yeah? What would you show me?”

He thought for a moment, trying to think of what would appeal to Leslie. Then it came to him, the perfect, goofy, awesome thing he’d show her.

“Out by Partridge Lake—”

“There’s a lake in Partridge?”

“Of course there’s a lake in Partridge. It’s the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Actually, that’s a misnomer. There are 11,842 lakes in Minnesota. Any town worth anything has a lake.”

She gave him one of her “nerd” looks, and he wished he hadn’t gotten so specific, but she nudged him to go on.

“So … what would you show me by Partridge Lake?”

“There’s this giant wooden hamster wheel out by the water.”

“There’s what?” Leslie started giggling. “You’d take me to Minnesota to see a hamster wheel?”

Ben knew it sounded ridiculous, but he was sticking to his guns. He was sure she would think this was great. “It’s not just any hamster wheel. It’s huge. Adult men can fit in this thing.”

She giggled harder at that, and he waited patiently until she got herself back under control. “And why does this thing exist?”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” he said, grinning. “I often wondered that myself. It was fun, though.”

“Spent a lot of time in the hamster wheel, did you?” she teased.

He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “When I was a kid. A teenager. It was actually kind of dangerous. You could get the thing moving and really get bumped around. I wonder if it’s still there even.”

“I hope so,” she said, gratifyingly. “I want to see this thing!”

He grinned, because he’d been right: she would love to see something like that.

“And then what?” Leslie pressed him.

“And then … we’d drive to Darwin. It’s a really tiny town. Only a couple hundred people live there, but they’ve got a giant ball of twine.”

Leslie snorted. “Ben, you really know what the ladies like!”

“Maybe not. But I know what you like,” he said smugly, holding her close.

And she caved. “Okay, you’re right, I totally want to see that. How big is it?”

“I don’t remember. It probably seemed bigger when I was the kid.”

“But it’s the biggest, right?”

“The biggest made by one man. There’s another one somewhere else that’s bigger, but more people worked on it.”

She looked thoughtful, and he nudged her. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I’m just trying to think, what’s cooler. One guy making a really big ball of twine all by himself, or a bunch of people making an even bigger ball of twine.”

He laughed. “I don’t know. They’re both pretty weird. They’ve only got the one up in Minnesota, though.”

“That’s okay. I kind of want to see the other one, too, though. Someday let’s find out where it is, and we’ll road trip.”

“Um, yeah, we’ll do that,” he agreed, his heart fluttering at the word “someday.” Sometimes he wasn’t sure how Leslie really felt about him, worried that maybe he felt more strongly than she did. But then she’d casually use a word like “someday” and it filled him with hope.

Then he had an idea, something he wanted to show her. He’d almost forgotten he’d been carrying this around with him all this time, but suddenly it seemed important enough that it was worth leaving the warmth of the blanket and her snuggly self.

She frowned at him getting up. “Hold on, I’m coming right back,” he reassured her.

Setting his mug on the table, he went to his laptop bag, which he’d left by Leslie’s front door, opened the zipper pouch on the inside, the one he never used. The large envelope was still there. Seriously, he’d managed to carry this thing around for seven years. It was older than his laptop.

“I have something I want to show you,” he said, sliding back in next to her on the couch. From the envelope, he pulled out an 8x10 photograph.

She studied it, a small but delighted smile turning up the corners of her mouth, then looked up at him in confusion. “It’s beautiful. What is it?”

“It’s the ice palace they built in 2004 in St. Paul. It was part of the winter carnival,” he explained, gazing down at the massive glittering towers and hoping she would see what he saw.

She looked curiously between him and the photo. “Who built it? How?”

“Um, I don’t know exactly. The city? I think there were a lot of private donations involved. But basically, they cut thousands of chunks of ice out of Lake Phalen and built a life-sized castle in the middle of the city. Isn’t it the greatest thing you’ve ever seen? I mean, aside from Lil Sebastian, of course.”

Leslie let out a low whistle under her breath, and he could hardly remember a time when he’d seen her look so impressed. It made him beam with pride, even though he had nothing to do with this thing. But he liked being able to show her that something like that was possible.

“You and ice,” she murmured, and she wasn’t teasing him about it this time. “But, wait. I thought you already lived in Indiana at that point. Did you go back for this?”

“No. My mom sent me the picture.” He hesitated a moment, then flipped it over to show her the back.

Scrawled on the corner, in a woman’s handwriting was this: “Benji, I thought you should see this. Sometimes crazy ice dreams really do come true.”

Leslie read it and smiled thoughtfully. “I think I’d really like your mom.”

Ben looked from the message to the beautiful woman sitting next to him, the second person in the world to believe in him that much. “I think she’d really like you too.” And then he flashed back to her mad broomball skills and thought, heck, so would his dad and his brother.

Taking the photo and Leslie’s empty cocoa mug out of her hands, he set them on the coffee table, then gently brushed a stray strand of yellow hair out of her eyes.

He had been half joking about the things he’d show her on this hypothetical trip, but suddenly he really wanted to take her there—wanted her to meet the people he grew up with and see all the little things that made him who he turned out to be: the park with his favorite monkey bars, the field where he played JV baseball, the auditorium that hosted both his high school prom and his mayoral debate. Even the empty lot where Ice Town should have been built. He’d never wanted to show all that to anyone before.

“I love you,” he blurted softly, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he knew he was going to say them, then he panicked and started to back pedal. “I mean, I’m sorry, I know it’s too soon, I shouldn’t be saying things like that, and you don’t have to—“

But while he was stammering, she was climbing into his lap, straddling him, and she cut him off with an emphatic kiss, pulling back just long enough to murmur, “Shut up, Ice Town. I love you too.” And then she was kissing him again, and he knew there was nowhere in the world he would rather be.

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently there are some broomball leagues in Indiana according to google, but personally I had never heard of it until I moved to Minnesota, and the whole thing sounded bonkers. Here's the [Darwin twineball](http://www.darwintwineball.com/) and the [St. Paul Ice Palace](https://www.wintercarnival.com/events/ice-palaces/). The hamster wheel was a real thing by Lake Ripley in a small town called Litchfield, and I have no idea what it really was or why it was there, but Mr. Rikyl and his friends enjoyed it greatly.


End file.
